Motorola Droid 2 Verizon pre-sale kicks off 11 August

US carrier Verizon has announced that it will be opening the pre-sale for the Motorola Droid 2 on 11 August.

The network, fresh from its launch last month of the Motorola Droid X, will be offering the Android 2.2 device for $199.99 (after a $100 rebate) on 2-year contracts.

The Motorola Droid 2 features a 3.7-inch WVGA multi-touch screen, and has a full slider QWERTY keyboard. There is also a virtual keyboard option (including Swype) for quick messaging as well as a speech-to-text feature too.

The Froyo device comes pre-loaded with Flash 10.1 and also supports tethering. In order to make your Droid 2 into a mobile hotspot, you'll need to pay an extra $20 a month and for this you'll be able to sync it with up to five Wi-Fi enabled devices.

The Droid 2 packs a 1Ghz OMAP 3640 CPU and has 8GB of storage on board. It will come with an 8GB microSD card in the box, so you'll have 16GB in total - but you can up this to 40GB with a 32GB card.

It has a 5-megapixel camera and videos can be recorded in "DVD quality".

"With the new Droid 2, we’ve taken a big leap forward from the original", said Bill Ogle, chief marketing officer of Motorola Mobile Devices and Home Business.

"We listened to consumers and are providing an even more robust experience built on Android 2.2 that includes a new keyboard, increased processing power, Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and 3G Mobile HotSpot capabilities to send, access and share information even quicker than before".

As well as the standard Droid 2, Verizon has also announced that in September only it will be offering a limited edition R2-D2 themed Droid featuring exclusive Star Wars content.

There are no plans as yet to bring the Droid 2 to the UK, although if Pocket-lint hears anything we'll be sure to let you know.